06/02/2026
Timothy Leary died 30 years ago today. He spoke with William S. Burroughs a few hours before he died. Burroughs (who died a year later) was interviewed soon after Leary’s death. He said:
"I knew him for years. And I think he accomplished a great deal, really. I talked to him the day he died. His son called me and said that he was slipping in and out of the coma. But I talked to him. He said, uh, 'Is it true?' I didn't know exactly what he meant. Well, I guess it's true. [Chuckle] It's true, Tim. And then he just said, 'Well I, I love you, Bill,' and I said, 'I love you, Tim.' He died about four hours later. That was all there was to it." (Conversations with William S. Burroughs, 224)
Asked what Leary’s accomplishments were, Burroughs explained:
"He had a worldwide impact on young people, leading men to question what they had taken for granted, and to experiment. And to increase awareness. But it's obvious, I think, that the old, the old gods have fallen, the old beliefs are gone. Gone, crumbling before our eyes, of their own inertia. And when that happens, you look for something new."
Burroughs first met Leary in Tangiers in 1961, then visited him at Harvard. He was not initially impressed, quipping “I’m leery of Leary.” Ginsberg said in 1987 that Burroughs had once called Leary “a horse’s ass.” Indeed, he hoped Leary was a scientific man but found at Harvard he was “just sort of fooling around” on psilocybin. However, the two men later became good friends.
It was Allen Ginsberg whom Leary first met of the Beat writers. That meeting occurred in 1960, when Leary visited him. In January 1961, Leary and Ginsberg gave Kerouac some psilocybin, which resulted in him saying, “Walking on water wasn’t made in a day,” a statement that Ginsberg often quoted. Later that year, Leary went to Tangiers, where he spent more time with Ginsberg, met Corso, and had his first meeting with Burroughs. Ginsberg spoke very highly of Leary during and following his legal problems. He called him a “philosopher savant” and said:
"He’s the only man I know that no country in the world will have. So that means he couldn’t be wrong." (Allen Verbatim, p.8 )
Others in the counterculture were markedly less impressed, including Hunter S. Thompson, who repeatedly criticised Leary. In one interview, he said:
"Every time I think about Tim Leary I get angry. He was a liar and a quack and a worse human being than Richard Nixon." (Ancient Gonzo Wisdom, p.264)
Further reading: There is some great information about their meeting and collaboration on the Human Be-in in Jane Kramer’s Allen Ginsberg in America (1969). It’s also worth looking up “The Houseboat Summit: Changes” in Conversations with Gary Snyder (ed by David Calonne, 2017). Ginsberg has some writings on Leary in Deliberate Prose (ed by Bill Morgan, 2000) and mentions him positively in many interviews.
Photo by Philip Heying, 1987.
